


What You Mean to Me

by Lady_Sci_Fi



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-28 20:17:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13279107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Sci_Fi/pseuds/Lady_Sci_Fi
Summary: The Distronic toxaemia from Skaro catches up with Sarah, leading her and the Doctor to confront what they mean to each other.





	What You Mean to Me

 “Go ahead, find a room, and relax while we’re in the vortex. I expect we’ll be here awhile. We could all use it,” the Doctor said as he stepped away from the Tardis console.

 “I thought you said the Brigadier called us back to Unit?” Harry asked. “Certainly it’s urgent for him to do that. Shouldn’t we-“

 “Harry, we’re in a time machine,” Sarah reminded. “It doesn’t matter when we go to him, as long as we arrive about the time he called for us.”

 “Oh… right.” Harry straightened his blue jacket. “I do suppose we could all do with a bit of rest.”

 “Is that a medical opinion?” the Doctor asked.

 “After the recent weeks we’ve had, I certainly hope so,” Sarah gave a tired smile. Now that the adrenaline of dealing with the Cybermen was gone, she certainly felt like she could sleep for a day straight. Being poisoned and running around caves and nearly crashing into Voga… And that had only been the most recent situation. There had been the Daleks before that, and the Sontaran before that, and the Wirrn… she could only hope the Doctor would let them stay in the vortex long enough for her to feel fully rested.

 “Sarah, do you know where the bedrooms are?” Harry asked, catching her as she went through the interior door to the rest of the Tardis.

 Sarah nodded. “I’m going to mine. There’s some more around it. Come on.”

 Once out of earshot of the Doctor, Harry leaned in the quietly ask, “Are you sure it doesn’t matter that we don’t go right away?”

 “I’m quite sure. Now stop your worrying. You said it yourself that we could all use some rest before charging off to who knows what kind of urgent situation.”

 “As long as he doesn’t have one of his absent-minded moments and forget about it.”

 Sarah rolled her eyes. Then a sudden wave of fatigue washed over her, and she stumbled sideways. Harry caught her, and Sarah tried to push him away with a mumbled, “I’m fine, just tired.”

 Harry kept his hold on her, and looked her over. “You don’t look fine. You’re suddenly pale and-“ He tightened his arms around her middle as her knees buckled and she nearly slipped from his support.

 “Just need to… to… get to bed…” Sarah breathed, trying to blink away the spots swimming in her vision.

 “Hospital bed, more like… pupils dilated…” Harry moved Sarah over to the wall to help support her weight as he went into doctor-mode, muttering under his breath. Then he called out for the Doctor.

A moment later, the Doctor admonished, “Harry, if you managed to get lost with Sarah showing…” his voice trailed out as he rounded the corner to find Harry holding Sarah up against the wall. “What happened?” Sarah’s eyes were closed, and she breathed heavily. It was clear that the only thing stopping her from being on the floor was Harry’s sturdy hand on her shoulder. The first two fingers of his other hand were on her neck, feeling her pulse.

 “I don’t know, really. She seemed fine one moment, then nearly passed out the next.”

 “Tired…” Sarah mumbled.

 The Doctor all but pushed Harry out of the way to get a good look at Sarah himself, his hands replacing the other man’s on her shoulder and neck. “Sarah?” He tilted her head up. “Look at me. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

 Sarah weakly half-opened her eyes, and gave a little delirious smile at the Timelord.

“She’s only mentioned being tired,” Harry supplied.

In one smooth motion, the Doctor had Sarah cradled in his arms, her head tucked under his chin. He hurried down the corridor, Harry tailing him. “Come on, sickbay.” 

 Once Sarah was situated on a bed and the Doctor was scanning her with some device Harry couldn’t recognize, the surgeon asked, “Could it be that poison from that… Cybermat thing? Maybe the T-mat didn’t get it all out?”

 “Possibly… though she hasn’t said she’s in any pain. If any part of that was still in her and regained strength, she’d be in pain, and there’s no pulsing of her veins like before… Think, Harry.”

 Sarah completely lost consciousness on the bed, and the Doctor undid the buttons of her tan shirt to hook her up to a machine via an electrode and wire to her chest.

 “What else could she have been exposed to, that we weren’t?” Harry inquired, keeping a hand on Sarah’s wrist to monitor her heartbeat the old-fashioned way.

 “Exactly, what else…” The Timelord’s eyes widened. “Skaro. All that radiation.”

 “But you said it wasn’t enough background-“

 “No, no, not in the atmosphere. Concentrated… the Thal rocket!”

 “Sarah and I weren’t near enough to the Kaled city when it hit, and I would've been affected too.”

 The Doctor shook his head, rushing to a cabinet of medical supplies and rifling through it. “Come on, Harry, your memory can’t be that terrible. When we rescued her, the Thals were wearing protective suits, but the captives loading the rocket were not!” He found what he was looking for, and hurried back to Sarah to administer it.

 “Radiation sickness, you mean?”

 “Exactly.” The Doctor scanned Sarah again, adjusting the device more specifically. “Distronic toxaemia, to be more precise.” His face fell as he took in the pale woman he hovered over. This was the second time in only a short period where he had hurriedly carried her to be treated for an alien toxin in her body. This one was less painful than the one the Cybermat had carried, but would be just as fatal if not treated. “Why didn’t she say anything?”

 “Is there anything I can do?”

 “Just keep an eye on that monitor, and tell me if anything goes critical.”

 Harry glanced over at the monitoring device hooked up to Sarah, finding familiar labels and numbers. Then he looked down to Sarah. “Don’t worry, old girl, we’ll have you back on your feet.”

 The Doctor wished the woman was conscious enough to at least admonish the other man for calling her that, like she always did. It would’ve given both he and Harry a little relief.

 The Timelord was very quiet as he worked. The radiation had been in Sarah’s system too long for this to be a simple and quick task. Other than tiny involuntary moans from Sarah, she was unresponsive through it all.

 Finally, the Doctor put everything down and let out a long breath. “I’ve done what I can,” he said to Harry. “It wasn’t as critical as I had feared.”

 “Thankfully,” Harry acknowledged.

“We did cut it close, though.” The Doctor looked to the other man with a small grateful smile. “If you hadn’t been with her when it hit, if she had gone to sleep in her room…”

 Harry patted the Doctor’s shoulder. “Let’s not think about what-ifs. She’ll be alright, yes?”

 The Doctor nodded, gaze once again on Sarah. “She’ll be asleep a lot longer than a few hours.” He took her hand between both of his, gently rubbing the back of it.

 “Do you need me for anything else?”

 The Doctor shook his head. “Go get some rest.”

 Harry flashed a reassuring smile that Sarah would recover fine, and turned to the door. He was about to leave the sickbay when he realized, “I still don’t know where the bedrooms are. Sarah was showing me.”

 Without looking up from the unconscious woman, the Doctor gave directions starting from the console room.

 Harry thanked him, and said, “If you need me to look after her for a while, let me know.”

 “Thank you, Harry, but I’ll be fine.” Once the other man was gone, the Doctor lowered his head until it touched the warmer-than-healthy forehead of Sarah’s. “You’ve been doing a good job in frightening me recently. Please don’t do it again.” Then he withdrew. He found a chair and pulled it to her bedside. He took her hand again, and said softly, “Sleep as long as you need. I’ll be here.”

 ********

 The Doctor was dozing at Sarah’s bedside. He had barely left the sickbay at all, determined to be there for Sarah through it all.

 “Do…Doctor…?” came the quiet and slightly raspy voice.

 That startled the Timelord fully awake. He beamed down at her, taking in her half-open hazel eyes. “Sarah,” he breathed in relief. “Good to see you awake.”

 Sarah blinked a few times and slightly moved her head to see where she was. “Sickbay?”

 The Doctor nodded. “Of course. You’ve been here, sleeping for three days.”

 “Three days?” Sarah closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Never been that tired before.”

 “It was more than just being tired.”

 “I’d expect so, if you put me in the sickbay.”

 The Doctor helped Sarah sit up a little, then poured a cup of water and held it to her mouth to help her drink. Once she was done and he placed it back on the small table, he asked, “Why didn’t you tell me about the Distronic toxaemia?”

 Sarah’s brow furrowed in confusion for a few seconds until she remembered, “The Thal rocket. So that’s what happened?”

 The Doctor nodded. “You should’ve told me. It was very dangerous to let it sit in you as long as it did.”

 “I’m sorry. I started feeling better once Harry and I were away from the rocket, and with everything else going on… I guess I forgot.” Sarah took in the man’s appearance, like he’d been sitting in a chair for some time, barely sleeping or eating.

 “Please, don’t forget anything like this again, or try to hide it from me, no matter what’s going on.”

 “Have you been here the whole time?”

 “What?”

 “Sitting here with me for the whole three days?”

 It was the Doctor’s turn to look somewhat confused. “Of course I have. I wasn’t just going to leave you unattended.”

 “Harry could’ve looked after me, too.”

 “Harry is only qualified to work on sailors,” the Doctor joked.

 “I’m sure he could look after me.”

 “He could, but I needed to.”

 “There’s other things you could’ve been doing, other than looking after an unconscious person for three days.”

 “Nothing more important, no.”

 “Really? No Tardis tinkering or experiments or-“

 The Doctor took Sarah’s hand tightly, amazed that she could think any of that was more important. “Do you really think you’re worth less to me?”

 Sarah shrank back from the intensity of the man’s expression and tone. She shrugged in answer, still too tired to really think through what he was asking.

 The Doctor sighed. “Oh, Sarah Jane…” He looked away for a few seconds, getting his thoughts in order. He refocused on her, scooting in closer. “I could’ve asked Harry to be here or made an alert system to tell me if anything went wrong or you woke up while I did something else. The first option barely crossed my mind. The second did not at all. I would sit here with you as long as necessary.” He laid a hand on her cheek, lightly brushing the skin with his thumb. “Do you know what you mean to me?”

 Once again, the Timelord was quietly intense. Sarah was now more coherent as she responded, “We haven’t exactly had time to talk since you… regenerated.”

“No, we haven’t, have we…”

 Sarah pushed herself to fully sit up. “So, why don’t you tell me, unless you’d rather have me guess?”

 The Doctor moved from the chair to sit on the edge of the bed. He took her hand in both of his, studying the fingers for a moment. “I was so afraid, so many times in these recent weeks. Most of them had to do with you.” He took a deep breath. “When you were tied to that rock, as Styre’s experiment… When you lost consciousness, I only had a moment before Styre came and taunted me. All I saw was red and rage over what he’d done to you. I didn’t think, didn’t plan. He needed to pay for what he’d done to you, and I just charged at him.”

 Sarah remembered her first encounter with a Sontaran, and the Doctor seemed to read her mind. He said, “Yes, I knew the strength of Styre, but it didn’t matter in that moment. All that mattered was that he had hurt you.”

 The Doctor cleared his throat. “Then on Skaro, when I thought you and Harry had been killed by the Thal rocket that I had failed to stop… All I could do was stare at the screen that showed that destruction of the Kaled city, knowing that I’d sent you into that holocaust, that I would never see you again… You have no idea how relieved I was to find you in the wasteland.”

 Sarah smiled at the memory of the hard hug from the Timelord. “I think I had a bruise that tells me.”

 The Doctor kept his gaze on their hands. “When I’ve been flippant with you, it’s not… it’s not because I don’t care or don’t think you’re important. Far from it…” He fixed his blue eyes to her hazel ones. “After I regenerated, I was trying to figure out this new me. I still was when we left Unit. But, I knew one thing. I knew I wanted you with me. I knew that, whatever you meant to my previous self, my feelings for you had only deepened. I wanted you with me, because you mean so much to me.”

 “Doctor…” Sarah brought her other hand to rest on his. She almost couldn’t believe the outpouring of emotion from the Doctor, so different from his previous self. More erratic, more prone to emotion, more… somehow more and less Human at the same time. Her feelings, like his, had only deepened with his regeneration. What he was sharing with her now made her realize just how much it had.

 “I apologize if I’ve made you feel otherwise. This new me… I hope I haven’t put you off.”

 Sarah gave a small reassuring expression and shook her head. “You haven’t.” She leaned in close, his honesty of emotions telling her this was the moment to do this. “Do you know what you mean to me?”

 The Doctor lightly teased, “Are you going to make me guess?”

 Sarah shook her head. Then she grasped the man’s half-undone vest to pull him in closer. Her eyes closed as she pressed her lips to his, soft and gentle.

 When Sarah pulled away, the Doctor was still and staring at her, expression of mild shock. Sarah said after a few seconds, “I know you know what that means.”

 The Doctor cleared his throat as a smile crept along his mouth. “That was… that was nice. Would you do it again?”

 Sarah moved in again, whispering, “You mean so much to me, too,” before their mouths made contact again. This time, she was a little more assertive, and the Doctor answered with pressure of his own. Sarah’s hand on his vest splayed out on his chest. One of his hands slid up her arm and settled at her elbow.

 “Sarah…” the Doctor breathed, expressing need and desire and more.

 Sarah’s hand on the Timelord’s chest moved up to caress the side of his neck. Her whisper of his name expressed the same emotion.

 They came together again. The Doctor’s other hand moved up Sarah’s torso, undoing the monitoring device on her chest before continuing up to brush his fingers along her jaw.

 They didn’t break apart when they heard Harry’s voice say as he walked in, “Seriously, Doctor, I can look after… oh, I say!”

 “Harry?” Sarah giggled against the Doctor’s mouth.

 “Yes, old thi-Sarah? I must say, it’s nice seeing you… awake and-“

 “Go away.”

 “Yes, that would be, uh… appropriate and… I’ll be back later,” Harry stammered as he turned to leave.

 “Actually, get some food for Sarah, would you? I’m sure she’s quite hungry,” the Doctor requested. “She’ll have another day of bedrest.”

 “Some for him, too,” Sarah called after her friend. To the Doctor she said, “Unless he’ll finally leave my side to get his own food.”

 The Doctor lightly bumped his forehead to hers. “I wouldn’t leave your side before. I couldn’t now.”

 Sarah hummed in content as she fell back against the pillow, bringing the Doctor down with her.

 The Doctor quietly stated, “It means the universe that you’re with me.”

 Sarah pulled the Timelord in for another kiss, deeper than the previous ones. Right now, they didn’t any more words to communicate what they meant to each other.


End file.
